General Idea
«Test Tube/ TV Dinner Plates»

«The use of art which is both publicly and economically effective is treated thematically in five chapters and on three levels. Each chapter is introduced by General Idea, sitting at the ‹Colour Bar Lounge› of the ‹Pavillion›; they explicate the general theme of the whole and of each of the chapters in three-way discussion. Next we see various scenes of a television drama focusing on the career potential of a young New York artist: she is wooed by a powerful gallery and courted by the in-crowd of collectors and critics, but not without cost in her personal life. An advertising spot follows each chapter, taking up its respective theme through the vehicle of the ‹Colour Bar Lounge› or one of the multiples. The constant emphasis on the power of the media and advertising intercut with reflections on the role, tasks, and potential responses of the artist makes this videotape historically significant. [...] ‹Test Tube› (28 mins, 1979) was produced in Amsterdam on commission from the Stichting De Appel during a three-month stay as Artists-in-Residence at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, which first showed the tape in the same year as part of the exhibition ‹Colour Bar Lounge.›»

(source: Friedemann Malsch, The Other Reality: The Multiples of General Idea, in: Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (ed.), General Idea’s Fin de Siècle, exhib. cat., Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 1992, p. 34f.)